Friday, July 29, 2011

Tea Party tax

The Sons of Liberty tossed tea into Boston Harbor. The latter day Tea Party is flinging dollars toward China.

Taxes have a way of being named after the one person or group most associated with the levy, so it's only appropriate to label the cost of conservative dogma over reason as the Tea Party tax. In their steadfast devotion to skipping out on our bills, the Tea Party will exact trillions in costs, among them:

Higher interest payments to China and others who hold paper backed by the full faith and credit of the United States;

Sharply reduced corporate earnings, putting yet another excuse in place about the lack of job creation;

Significant investment losses for average working men and women fortunate to have a job and a retirement fund, based on mutual funds, in which to invest a portion of their wages for the future.

There are also intangible costs, impossible to put a dollar value on, including:

The loss of respect for the United States around the world which is seeing us as a quarrelsome, bickering mean-spirited people unwilling to pay its bills;

The demeaning of our public life, where facts are annoyances and insults are the coin of the realm.

Remember all of this as the Tea Party leads us off the cliff into a new recession, or worse. And remember it at the polls next year when listening the GOP candidates for president and Congress try to sell us swill and pretend it is gold.